Book 2: Chapter 42: Terrors of the Forest |
Zhong Da could feel the drumming of his heart through his whole body. Sweat streaked past his eyebrow and down his cheek as he and Wu Xui pushed forward through the path that the Hu Ancestor had pointed out to them. Neither one had even been aware of its existence until that moment, but it was without a shadow of a doubt the only reason why they were still alive now.
Wu Xui huddled closer to him as they took slow measured steps.
Their eyes snapping back and forth in the setting sun.
Both of them were too afraid to set camp off the pathway lest they attract the attention of what lived out in the Bleak Forests.
The bushes shifted ahead of them.
Zhong Da nearly started, holding Wu Xui tighter to prevent his own terror from becoming obvious.
It did not take long before the world around them shifted into what they had expected out of a place as renowned for so many monsters as this place was. Nothing like this had made itself apparent even when they first entered in hopes to catch up with the Hu Ancestor. Once they joined that party, there hadn’t been a single beast within his sensing distance except the poor Warg that Shui had ‘tamed’.
And the hatchlings.
They both stood frozen for a few seconds, unwilling to use their Qi unless forced to. Doing so would attract bigger, stronger, more frightening monsters to come out of their abodes and lock onto their scent. A death sentence for anyone at their level.
Now, every step was measured.
Wu Xui jumped as a bird cawed from the canopy. Its call loud enough to make both of them step back from its force. A monster clearly a greater realm above both of them–
Then it happened.
Both stared in awe as a serpentine form tore through the canopy with its maw open wide above them. Glistening scales of red, green, silver, and gold reflected the last bits of sun. It had been waiting. Silently, and without anything to out its stealth. Not even being so close had either one of them figured out it had been there.
The bird squawked, a roar escaped the Long Dragon, and then silence as it disappeared above the canopy.
Zhong Da trembled as he stared out into the darkening sky from the shredded gap above them. Entire trees were sheared in the shape of the dragon’s path. “Look. Up there,” he whispered to Wu Xui.
She turned to where he had pointed.
Far above in the sky, within a second, the dragon that had just been tearing through the canopy was now hundreds if not a thousand miles in the air. A gargantuan bird in its mouth that was limp and clearly dead. They could see its twisted neck with their enhanced eyes, the gashes and fatal wounds that marked where the dragon had caught it. A sign that neither one of them had any chance of surviving in this forest except through destiny and fate.
There were levels to the Bleak Forests and they were on the very bottom rung.
Just need to get through this stretch. Safety is close!
Neither one of them missed how empty the forest had been for a good few days after they left Yin Hu’s camp. A radius that surrounded the powerful ancestor that made it clear where he stood in the totem pole of powerful entities that roamed the area. No dragon had been brazen enough to hunt before him. No bird dared caw or let out a sound. No critter would ever shift even slightly.
Dead silence was the only thing remaining for anything that called this place home when the Hu Ancestor passed by.
“We need to keep moving,” Wu Xui whispered quietly to him. “The Spiritual Demonic Trees in this area are getting restless again.”
Zhong Da looked around and saw branches stretching and creaking to reach out for them. Slowly making their way to drink their blood and feast upon their carcasses. The majority of them in this forest were looking to kill anything they could catch that wasn’t strong enough to topple them over. Everyone they passed had thought they were the perfect prey.
Wu Xui had been the first to notice them. A distant echo that reminded her of the Blood Dao she called her own. One that filled the forest.
The couple began to move again. Stopping for too long had the forest trying to kill them.
It wasn’t until hours later, past the deepest parts of the night and closer to dawn, did anything new happen.
And it occurred nearly the same way as every time.
The bushes shifted. Silence met them for long moments as the couple prepared to fight for their lives–
A bunny jumped in front of their path. The first time any beast had stopped them while trekking on this route. Everything had watched from a distance and refused to step onto the bumpy road underneath them.
It blinked its massive red eyes at them. The rabbit's white fur made it look ghostly in the perfectly timed rising sunlight behind it. Then it bared its giant fangs at them, a low squeaking tremor escaping the maw of sharp teeth it had.
“Back away slowly, love…” Zhong Da said as he moved in front of her.
We must have crossed something for this Demonic Spirit Beast to appear before us like this. It won’t attack if we back away.
The bunny tilted its head and thumped its leg on the ground, as if demanding they stop moving and ready their necks for it to feast upon.
A single thought couldn’t help but appear in his mind. A doubt he should have ignored.
What the fuck are we doing out here!?
---v---v---v---
Zi Zhen coughed another bucket of blood.
His internals were only being held together by strings and threads of weak Qi that threatened to snap if he shifted even slightly.
“You know…” the Second Calamity said, tapping at her chin. She had piled his two free discuses up vertically to sit on for some reason. “... I should probably heal you. Can’t have you die after you killed my previous servant.” She hummed to herself. “When is your guy coming back anyway? How long does it take for you peoples to move from one place to another? Days? Weeks? Why are you all so slow?”
Never had he felt so insulted before. Never had he felt so weak before. Never had he…
Ever since killing his father, the true Hu Ancestor that the Original Calamity claimed to be, there had not been a moment he allowed someone to beat him so thoroughly. There was always a way to plan and plot someone’s demise. Even figures that were far stronger than he was.
Commit atrocities in their name and push their rivals toward them.
Falsify records and start rumor mongering.
Steal treasures that sects and clans would fight to the death for and plant them in the homes of those you hated most.
There were endless ways to bring ruin to another person. Yet, Zi Zhen found himself at a loss. What the hell was he supposed to do against a Nine-Tailed Fox? A beast from myth that ranked amongst the ascended. Clans of power that had once been upon their world, but had moved entire mountains with them in cataclysmic events when their entire clans were forced into a higher realm.
All of that should have been nothing but long tales and folk stories…
His eyes began to darken, the figure of the Second Calamity was now distant and blurry.
“Ah shit! You’re losing consciousness again! How brittle you are! I didn’t do anything except swat you like the bug you are. A slightly bigger bug, but a bug nonetheless…”
Zi Zhen took a deep haggard breath as a pill was forced into his mouth.
Qi flooded through his body, meridians, and into his core. More energy than he could handle from a tiny thing the lady had casually thrown in his mouth just to heal him slightly. More than everything he had claimed to be his new found power.
Almost at an immortal realm?
Power unlike anything in this world?
Killing one of the Calamities himself after their pyrrhic war against one another?
What delusion had fueled his misery? What cost had he accepted when he sacrificed the only people that had been his true equals. Men that had been willing to call him an associate at the very least. The only people that would have. No one else on the entire planet would ever share a seat with him again. Zi Zhen was okay with that had it worked. If he had claimed the world as his, seated upon a throne of Demonic Power.
A dictator that killed anyone that dissented, mobilizing everything they could reach to increase his power until he could ascend just like the myths had claimed.
Zi Zhen coughed as his eyes cleared.
His injuries and wounds knit themselves together faster than he thought possible.
“Good. You’ll be perfectly healed in a second or two.” the lady sighed. She jumped off her seat and walked out of the room, leaving him by himself.
Why? Why is she doing this? Why not go find the other Calamity herself? Why does she need information like this?
It wouldn’t make sense to him. None of it did.
Why not start the battle already?
Why was the Original Calamity not doing the same and instead taking its time to leisurely traverse and explore uncivilized lands filled with monsters?
What was the point in all of this? Just end the misery of everything alive and kill them already. Why torture them so? Why?! Why?!